Lead Software Engineer AI for Hardware Verification

Cadence Design Systems Inc. is looking for a motivated Lead Software Engineer to work with us in San Jose California.

At Cadence we hire and develop leaders and innovators who want to impact the world of technology. Cadence has been nominated as a Great Place to Work globally and is also a Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For.

As a Lead Software Engineer you will be part of the HSV Software team in the SVG group in San Jose California.

The HSV Software team builds AI-enabled software products that support emulation and prototyping platforms helping customers accelerate design bring-up debug verification and validation workflows.

To understand more on what we do you can visit at Cadence is very dynamic fast-paced and integrated with other teams all around the world.

Job Description:

• Design and develop AI-enabled software components for emulation and prototyping workflows balancing reliability maintainability security latency cost and integration with existing product architecture.
• Build LLM-based agents RAG workflows and automation services that improve design bring-up verification debug and validation while recommending product enhancements beyond defect fixes.
• Apply secure and responsible AI practices including data protection access control prompt-injection awareness safe tool use auditability and careful handling of sensitive design data.
• Create and execute testing evaluation and observability workflows for assigned AI product areas covering regression tests retrieval quality model-output review tracing and failure analysis.
• Serve as a technical resource for peers and less-experienced engineers collaborating with internal partners senior individual contributors and managers to deliver high-quality AI-enabled software.

Requirements:

• Bachelors degree in Computer Science Computer Engineering Electrical Engineering or equivalent experience; typically 4 years with a Bachelors 2 years with a Masters or PhD-level preparation in related software development.
• Strong Python skills and software engineering fundamentals including APIs testing debugging maintainability Unix/Linux environments and distributed development workflows.
• Hands-on experience building AI-enabled applications agentic workflows or automation services using LLM APIs open-source models enterprise AI platforms and orchestration tools such as LangGraph LangChain AutoGen CrewAI or similar frameworks.
• Understanding of modern RAG and agentic AI patterns including retrieval chunking embeddings vector or hybrid search reranking tool calling workflow orchestration human-in-the-loop review and traceability.
• Ability to evaluate secure and debug AI product behavior using golden datasets regression tests hallucination checks prompt and retrieval analysis observability traces quality metrics and responsible AI practices.

Nice to have:

• Experience developing software using version control systems and modern CI/CD practices.

• Experience with other programming languages such as C Tcl or JavaScript/TypeScript.
• Knowledge or experience with design verification emulation prototyping or hardware-assisted debug workflows.
• Knowledge or experience with EDA and VLSI design including Verilog SystemVerilog or VHDL.
• Exposure to practical AI application security such as prompt-injection awareness safe tool integration access control input/output validation or secure handling of design data.

Additional Job Details:

• Employment category: Full-time.

• Employment term: 40 hours/week.
• Competitive benefits.
• Location: San Jose California.

About Cadence Design Systems:

Cadence is the only company that provides the expertise and tools IP and hardware required for the entire electronics design chain from chip design to chip packaging to boards and to systems. We enable electronic systems and semiconductor companies to create innovative products that transform the way people live work and play. Our products are used in mobile consumer cloud datacenter automotive aerospace IoT industrial and other market segments. For more information access .

The annual salary range for California is $119000 to $221000. You may also be eligible to receive incentive compensation: bonus equity and benefits. Sales positions generally offer a competitive On Target Earnings (OTE) incentive compensation structure. Please note that the salary range is a guideline and compensation may vary based on factors such as qualifications skill level competencies and work location. Our benefits programs include: paid vacation and paid holidays 401(k) plan with employer match employee stock purchase plan a variety of medical dental and vision plan options and more.